


The World in Jack and White

by Tierfal



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-07
Updated: 2010-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a field outside of Cardiff, under a familiar pattern of stars, Jack and Ianto have a little talk with a lot of innuendo.  (Set pretty immediately after 2.1.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World in Jack and White

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this the day after having watched "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang." After having watched "Boom Town" the night before that. After having watched "The Sound of Drums" and "The Last of the Time Lords" the previous week. Thinking about it that way, this was totally inevitable. XD All credit for the brilliance of the last joke goes to the wonderful Koneko_Zero, as reported to me by Eltea. And speaking of Eltea, she's the reason I feel like I can write about these two at all, really. Beware spoilers through TW 2.1 and DW Series 3.

Jack spreads his coat out on the grass, the brown silk lining dully gleaming. He flops down, sighs, and folds his hands behind his head, well-aware that most Hollywood producers would kill puppies for a few frames of him right now. Ianto, his clenched fists in his pockets, is looking back at the road, where the SUV glitters in the dark like a hard-backed beetle waiting to skitter off at the slightest provocation. Jack waits patiently until Ianto glances at him, at which point he pats the open expanse of coat that he's left for the purpose.

"Lie down, my boy," he says.

"Comparatively speaking," Ianto says, settling fastidiously, "this isn't unlike pedophilia."

Ianto Jones has strange ideas about flirting, even by twenty-first century standards.

"Comparatively speaking," Jack remarks, "this conversation is already kind of freaky."

Ianto smirks and closes his eyes, knitting his hands on his chest. Jack thinks of cats, which only sleep where they feel safe. He wants to reach out and scratch behind Ianto's ears, but he's probably in too deep as it stands. As it lies. As it lounges.

"Ianto," he says, looking up at an open sky full of endless stars, "have you ever thought about the end of the world?"

"Didn't we avert that with pluck and ingenuity?" Ianto asks.

Jack smiles, wryly. "Not that kind of end of the world. Not the kind where you have a choice, and mistakes are made, and then there's an even harder choice. Not the kind with any choice at all."

Ianto is quiet for a moment before he answers, "I wrote a novella about the Apocalypse when I was fifteen."

Rather despite himself, Jack grins. He's trying not to think too specifically about a fifteen-year-old Ianto bent over his homework desk, tapping a ballpoint pen against his lips as he calculates the precise range of nuclear missiles or a giant asteroid, because imagining a teenaged Ianto in too much detail qualifies as pedophilia by just about anyone's definition. "Were you born with a birthmark in the shape of the Torchwood logo, or what?"

Ianto is rarely smug, per se, but his air of knowing how to respond to what you'll say before you've said it probably seems like arrogance to the less discerning. "You'd have seen it by now."

"You could've gotten it covered up," Jack supplies, playing along. They don't get to play enough—Jack does miss that. Another thing he struggles not to contemplate is just how brilliant things might have been if Ianto had been born in a different century, into a different life; if they'd both been in the Time Agency together, perhaps. Nothing could have stopped them then. And Ianto would have gotten a ridiculously sexy period coat—Jack will have to pick out an era later on Wikipedia while pretending to do paperwork.

"My mother would have exposed me in the countryside if I'd been born with a devil's mark," Ianto says, with the tone of noncommittal idleness he always uses to discuss his past. Jack doesn't think any of it's true, but he doesn't care; it's Ianto's business, and the man he has is the present one. They don't push each other when it comes to what and who went before.

Jack surmises the laissez-faire policy is most of the reason Ianto doesn't mind dating the man who shot his previous girlfriend to death.

And his team gives _him_ a hard time for withholding his personal history.

"You must have been an adorable baby," Jack decides. He's envisioning one of those extremely round-faced, unrelentingly serious children who watch everything like they're memorizing their lives as they go along.

"Pedophile," Ianto says. "Is there a reason you're asking about my Armageddon preferences? Should I be selling all my stock?"

Jack spent part of this morning trying to plan these words, but they wouldn't fit right then either. He takes a deep breath and squints up at the stars, at the infinite suns that will flicker and fall dead someday—a day he's seen.

"When I was gone," he says, "I saw the end of the universe. Running tour. Lots of running; love the running. And we made it back here, barely—" His Vortex Manipulator tightens fractionally on his wrist; it gets excited when he thinks about it. "—only to watch the whole Earth go up in flames and down into rubble. It wasn't like with Abaddon—and it wasn't like any of the other times I'd been with him, where there were choices and chances and options, even if they were terrible ones. Because this was one of my Doctor's people, and… well, the Doctor said he was an old friend, but he obviously meant 'boyfriend I dumped because he was off his rocker, which naturally made him worse.'"

"It's always the exes," Ianto murmurs, and Jack resists the urge to look at him and try to gauge the cynicism levels.

"Exactly. Anyway, this guy was… just as brilliant as the Doctor, maybe more, and he was holding all the cards. There was nothing we could do—not that we didn't try, but it was hopeless. It was really pretty impressive how well he'd planned it out. So he kept us under his thumb, pressed down just too gently to be crushed, and shredded the planet for scrap. I don't know how many died. I don't know how many times I did."

Ianto doesn't shift. "How long?"

"A year," Jack says. "The Doctor turned it back like a Cher song—" He does glance at Ianto this time, because he needs that thin little smile to sustain him. "—and only those of us who were in the thick of it get the privilege of remembering."

"Where were we?" Ianto asks.

"The Himalayas, initially."

"I'll be skeptical of travel prizes in the future. Owen always signs up for them."

"Good idea. After that, I don't know. I always hoped you'd hidden somehow."

Ianto frowns. "I doubt even the Doctor's maniacal ex-boyfriend would have cared much for Cardiff. Not exactly the site of a lot of turmoil."

Jack smiles, because his first visit saw the now-familiar Plass riddled with fissures, and a streak of seething energy split the sky.

"Yeah," he says. "Pretty calm place, Cardiff."

"Did you leave the Doctor?" Ianto asks. "Or did he leave you?"

Jack smiles again, less bitterly than he would have thought. "Ah, there's the clincher. I beat him to it this time. Torchwood needs me more."

And the Doctor would have picked the Master over him—over everything. That was the real, slow-burning, low-humming horror: how alike they were. They were mirror images, equally ingenious, even in ambition, perfectly matched. The Master was the Doctor, unhinged and left to fester. If the Doctor had been, or ever were to become, a different man—if the travels and the ruin and the loneliness ever finally break him—

Jack can't think like that. Besides, that's why he's here. Now Cardiff is one less corner of the world the Doctor has to protect. Jack can give him that much. He can make Earth, the damsel in distress of the universe, tax the Doctor just a little less.

"Torchwood will always need you," Ianto says quietly. "But what do you need from it?"

Jack thinks the prospect over. He's gotten very good at thinking over the past year; he can entertain himself for hours.

"Something to do," he answers. "Something important. No point messing around on this planet if you can't make a difference." He considers. "And sex. Need sex. Lots of sex. You know, the Doctor owes me Sorry-I-Always-Give-You-Abandonment-Issues Sex."

Ianto smirks. "Does everyone in the world owe you some kind of compensatory sex, or does it just seem that way?"

"I haven't managed to meet everyone in the world," Jack tells him. "I keep trying, but you people die too fast. At the rate things are going, though… yeah, probably everyone."

"Is that all you want?" Ianto asks. "Bit of a hobby, bit of a _hobby_?"

"Time," Jack says. "Time to see as much as I can, and somebody to see it with."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Ianto says. "'Hullo, ladies; I'm Jack Harkness. I'm immortal, and I have a great cock. I've got various affidavits about its greatness, if you'd like to read them first. Fancy a bit of fifty-first century flavor?'"

Jack laughs, and not just at the excellent imitation of his accent. "I'm going to use that line, you know."

Ianto sits up and brushes the wrinkles out of his shirt. "Well?" he says, looking down at Jack. "Do I get Making-Up-for-Lost-Time Sex?"

Jack grins. Ianto gets up and offers him a hand, and he takes it, replying, "Do you even have to ask?"

"Formalities," Ianto explains. He watches Jack peel his coat off of the damp grass. "Though I take it all back if you try to get me to dry-clean that thing."

Jack shrugs it on, feeling its warm weight settle on his shoulders, as it has done probably half a million times before. He tugs contentedly at the sleeves and looks up at Ianto, who has folded his arms and allowed a small, fond smile. The young—all right, he's just walking into these now—Welshman reaches out and sweeps a palm over the collar of the coat.

"Did you meet yourself?" he asks. "At the end of the universe, I mean."

Jack wrinkles his nose. "That's a paradox."

Ianto starts for the car, twirling the keys. "So is an Apocalypse that never happened."

"Touché."

Ianto slips into the driver's seat and guns the engine, and Jack adjusts his seatbelt around the coat buttons.

"I won't ask you to dry-clean it," he says. "Primarily because I'm very attached to Makes-the-Coat-Smell-a-Bit-Like-Ianto-Afterward Sex."

There's just enough light from the headlamps and the dashboard for Jack to see the corners of Ianto's lips curl upward. "I do believe you're mad, Mister Harkness."

"Yeah," Jack says, stretching back and crossing his legs at the ankle. "But I make it look damn good."

Ianto grins, and Jack thinks that if the esteemed Ianto Jones was a Time Agent, he would wear a nice tailcoat. Something a bit _Pride and Prejudice_.

Or, if Jack was very lucky, nothing at all.

He's really, _really_ looking forward to Celibate-for-a-Nonexistent-Year Sex.


End file.
